1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer driver program having a function of allocating data of a logical page to one or more physical pages, and an image forming apparatus that prints the print data created at the printer driver program.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a function of printing a page (logical page), which is supposed by an application program or a document, as allocated to a page (physical page) determined according to the size of a printing sheet or intention of a user, when the page (logical page) is printed by means of an image forming apparatus. One simple example of a logical page is described below. One worksheet in spreadsheet software corresponds to one logical page. In document composition software having no concept of a page break, such as a text editor, one piece of document data corresponds to one logical page. When the aforesaid worksheet has a great volume having a great number of vertical and lateral columns and this worksheet is to be printed, this might not be able to be printed in one printing sheet (physical page), or it might be unsuitable for printing this worksheet in one printing sheet. In this case, one worksheet is allocated to plural sheets (physical pages) to be printed. The allocating process of the logical page is performed by a printer driver, for example.
However, there may be the case in which the extra page that is not intended by a user is printed by the aforesaid allocating function. One example of this case is a page in which only a ruled line of a table, which is out of range of one physical page, is printed. Another example is the case in which print data having one line or several lines whose characters are not correctly translated is printed over plural pages, because the process of the print data is not correctly performed at a host or a communication error occurs. There is no special determination made for the content of the respective physical pages, even if they are the pages not intended by a user. Therefore, printing process might be carried out, and hence, printing sheets or toner might be wastefully consumed.
As a technique relating to the above-mentioned case, there has been known a technique in which, when a ratio of a blank portion occupied in a page to be printed is higher than a predetermined value, this page is determined to be a blank sheet, and an alarm is issued for reducing the printing of an extra page (e.g., Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. 2006-164151).
However, in the determination on the basis of only the ratio of the blank portion, an alarm might be issued, even if a user intends to print this page. Therefore, a technique capable of determining whether an alarm should be issued or not according to the content of the respective physical pages has been demanded.
Taking again the aforesaid worksheet as an example, a user generally sets such that he/she adjusts the margin setting of the physical page or the reduction ratio of the image in order not to create the out-of-range portion, and then, performs again the printing process, rather than a user does not print only the page on which the ruled line is only printed. However, the operation of re-printing not only wastes a printing sheet or toner, but also is a troublesome operation that wastes user's time. A technique capable of determining whether or not the out-of-range portion is combinable within one page before the printing is outputted has been demanded. Further, a technique capable of propose the combinable layout has been demanded.